Elizabeth Oliver moved home to Kingston, N.Y., in 1990 after four years in New York City, thinking she soon would end her brief career in banking.

She liked her job but didn't love it, and her husband, Richard, was going to work in her family's auto dealer business. So she figured the job she took at KeyBank in Kingston would last only until her first child came along.

“He (her father) never paid my husband enough for me to stop working,” Lisa Oliver said — mostly joking. “I thought I was going to be a stay-at-home mom when I moved upstate.”

It didn't work out that way, and now Ms. Oliver, 44, is president of KeyBank's Cleveland district, the largest of KeyCorp's 23 regional business units. The Cleveland district covers banking operations in five counties — Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, and Lorain — with $3 billion in assets. Ms. Oliver's portfolio includes 70 retail branches; middle market, commercial banking and wealth management units; and 700 employees.

By the time she became pregnant after three years in Kingston, Ms. Oliver had risen from a commercial lending job to leading small-business lending teams first for the Hudson Valley area and then for all of New England. And she found a career she couldn't give up.

“I wanted to keep doing it because it's very fulfilling and I saw more of a career progression,” she said.

Shaping the careers of her employees was what energized her most.

“What I like best is working with people and watching them grow and advance,” she said. “I like figuring out how do we get (employees) into a role and then I like watching them blossom. Sure, I'm a manger, a leader, but I see that a significant portion of what I do is as a coach.”

When she went for the next step on the ladder, though, a job as a district president, it didn't happen as quickly as she'd hoped. She bid for jobs first in Syracuse and then in Albany, but without success.

“Then at the end of 2002 I got a call from Yank Heisler (then CEO of KeyBank N.A.) saying, "I don't want to interview you, I want you to come to Cleveland and be the market president here.'”

Mr. Heisler, in retirement now as assistant to the president of Kent State University, said bringing Ms. Oliver to Cleveland was one of his best moves.

“She was intense, but she had a nice way of getting results,” he said. “She has the whole package.

“We don't always pick them this well,” he said.

Her current boss seconds that opinion.

“She's improved the results (in the Cleveland district) dramatically,” said Charles W. Sulerzyski, president of KeyBank N.A.'s Great Lakes Region. “She's done a great job in building a high-performance team by recruiting top talent and developing existing talent.”

Coming to Cleveland was a big move. Ms. Oliver lost the family support system in her small hometown that had made raising two sons while working comfortable. It also meant that her husband was, for a time, a job-seeking trailing spouse. He's now a vice president with a Key competitor, Fifth Third Bank in Cleveland.

Though the collapse of the home mortgage market is still churning the banking business, Ms. Oliver said her biggest challenge is at home.

“We all deal with the guilt that we're never quite enough of a mother, never quite enough of a wife and never quite enough of a worker,” she said. “But at the end of the day you realize you're working harder than a lot of your peers and that you do it because you love it. And I'm a better mother because I work.”